Determine bit depth of bmp file on os x - macos

Question

How can I determine the bit depth of a bmp file on Mac OS X? In particular, I want to check if a bmp file is a true 24 bit file, or if it is being saved as a greyscale (i.e. 8 bit) image. I have a black-and-white image which I think I have forced to be 24 bit (using convert -type TrueColor), but Imagemagick gives conflicting results:
> identify -verbose hiBW24.bmp
...
Type: Grayscale
Base type: Grayscale
Endianess: Undefined
Colorspace: Gray
> identify -debug coder hiBW24.bmp
...
Bits per pixel: 24
A number of other command-line utilities are no help, it seems:
> file hi.bmp
hi.bmp: data
> exiv2 hiBW24.bmp
File name : hiBW24.bmp
File size : 286338 Bytes
MIME type : image/x-ms-bmp
Image size : 200 x 477
hiBW24.bmp: No Exif data found in the file
> mediainfo -f hi.bmp
...[nothing useful]

Answer 1

If you want a commend-line utility try sips (do not forget to read the manpage with man sips). Example:
*terminal input*
sips -g all /Users/hg/Pictures/2012/03/14/QRCodeA.bmp
*output is:*
/Users/hg/Pictures/2012/03/14/QRCodeA.bmp
pixelWidth: 150
pixelHeight: 143
typeIdentifier: com.microsoft.bmp
format: bmp
formatOptions: default
dpiWidth: 96.000
dpiHeight: 96.000
samplesPerPixel: 3
bitsPerSample: 8
hasAlpha: no
space: RGB
I think the result contains the values you are after.
Another way is to open the image with the previewer preview.app and the open the info panel.
One of the most informative programs (but not easy to use) is exiftool by Phil Harvey http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/ , which also works very well on MacOSX for a lot of file formats but maybe an overkill for your purpose.

Answer 2

I did this to investigate:
# create a black-to-white gradient and save as a BMP, then `identify` it to a file `unlim`
convert -size 256x256 gradient:black-white a.bmp
identify -verbose a.bmp > unlim
# create another black-to-white gradient but force 256 colours, then `identify` to a second file `256`
convert -size 256x256 gradient:black-white -colors 256 a.bmp
identify -verbose a.bmp > 256
# Now look at difference
opendiff unlim 256
And the difference is that the -colors 256 image has a palette in the header and has a Class:PseudoClass whereas the other has Class:Direct